INTERNET RAMBLES

Have 'green' burials gone too far?

Some recent options lack dignity and cost a fortune

Patty Ann Malley is a wife, mother and wanderer. The youngest of eight in a family that was firmly planted in one spot, she’s spent the last 29 years changing addresses (but not husbands), following jobs. Her careers have included retail, advertising, public relations, restaurant, catechist and ad-hoc needs-must fill-in-the-blank. She’s gone from being a wild child to a child of God. Her eternal question (“Are we there yet?”) has yet to be answered.

Does ending your life’s journey in a cramped coffin turn you off? Want to keep being productive? Remain a vital part of the scenery? Stay tuned.

Pushing up daisies – or veggies if you’re into that – may be the thing in Washington State as legislators seek to change the law about composting human remains. That’s right. If dead livestock can be turned into compost, why not people?

“Recomposition involves placing bodies in a vessel and hastening their decomposition into a nutrient-dense soil that can then be returned to families,” Wired says. “The aim is a less expensive way of dealing with human remains that is better for the environment than burial, which can leach chemicals into the ground, or cremation, which releases earth-warming carbon dioxide.”

Here’s a rundown in the following video:

Forget embalming, coffins and a gated hill of moss-stained headstones. Look to the Urban Death Project, architect Katrina Spade’s non-profit that has already died, giving rise to Recompose. It’s the new, green way of dealing with death.

“If Spade’s first recomposition center opens in Seattle in 2023 as planned, it’ll be an airy, spiritual place where people can carry their loved ones’ corpses to a final rest – and put those corpses’ decomposition to an eco-minded use.”

Are you buying this?

Airy? Spiritual?

I’m not sure about you, but the idea of being composted in bulk smacks of a mass grave, nothing spiritual about it. I don’t care how airy the place is. Same goes for Recompense’s offer for loved ones to return to claim “some” of the resulting dirt. Rich it may be, but that new soil could be anybody.

So much for the memory tree in the backyard. Families could be toting home a complete stranger, or a combination thereof.

But Spade insists that “death is an opportunity to let go of Americans’ obsession with individualism.” Say what? Since when is wanting dignity in death an obsession with individualism? Burying the dead is not an American-only custom. Far from it. Burying one’s dead en masse with strangers has never been ideal.

The so-called cost savings isn’t that great either. Yes, burial plots can be expensive. Yes, the cost of embalming, a casket, etc. can mount. But Recompose plans to charge $5,500 for its services. That’s a mass composting where the family can take home strangers and revel in letting go of their American individualism obsession. That’s some spendy virtue signaling when the average cost of a traditional funeral runs between $7-10,000. Meanwhile, the green burial trend where families prepare their own deceased for interment is growing.

But, hey, it’s a new year. Times are changing. But I doubt people will – not that much.

Growing up teckie – Alexa strikes again

The demands on children are high when it comes to technology. Imagine having to learn to read alongside navigating a computer, a smart fridge or what used to be a simple phone. More. More. More. New systems. New updates. New everything is coming at kids all the time.

There’s no getting used to it – technology just is. And some children, despite the bombardment, are adapting just fine. Like adults, kids are using high tech to their advantage, leaving those lesser tasks to the computer that would otherwise glob up precious time or effort.

Check out six-year-old Jariel Cueva in the video below:

Now, should this enterprising young man get punished? Or should he be praised for learning to make the best use of available resources?

That’s kind of what 24-year-old New Jersey mom, Yerelyn Cuerva wanted to know when she posted on Twitter.

“It was just any regular day of doing homework,” Cueva told New York Post. “I’m in the living room, and I overheard him asking Alexa some math problems, and I could not believe it,” adding that Jariel actually loves math, but was just being “lazy.”

I’d argue that he was using common sense – asking Alexa to handle the mundane tasks of the day so he could get on to bigger, more important matters.

And while technology is here to stay, the low-tech mentality of monkey-see-monkey-do is, too.

Good news for pizza lovers!

If you’re looking for a healthy New Year’s resolution, you may just want to cut out that bowl of breakfast cereal. What to eat instead? PIZZA!

The following video offers a spiffy bacon, tomato, spinach and egg pizza with a healthy yogurt crust: